Craig T. Owens

Jeroboam knew that saints who worship together will stick together. A unified church is hard to defeat. 

He first appeals to an easier option than the hard work it takes to travel all the way up to Jerusalem for the feasts of worship. 

   If this people goes up to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to sacrifice, then the heart of this people will turn again to their Lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah; and they will kill me and go back to Rehoboam king of Judah. So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “It is too much for you to go all the way up to Jerusalem. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” (1 Kings 12:27-28)

He then gave them replicas of the devoted things in Jerusalem—“behold your gods.” He tricked them to accept the counterfeit as the real thing. 

Next, he appointed unqualified priests (v. 31; 13:33). These priests weren’t accountable to God, but only to Jeroboam. 

Finally, he proposed an alternative date that they could gather to “worship” (vv. 32-33). 

Jeroboam’s sin was to make true worship seem like burdensome work, and then to pass off cheap and easy substitutes to make it appear that the people were worshiping God. But the Bible says, “And this thing became the sin of the dynasty of Jeroboam that caused it to be abolished and destroyed from the face of the earth” (1 Kings 13:34).